I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The threat that we face from terrorism is serious, and it is growing. The Security Service believes that since the attacks on 7 July 2005, about 40 terrorist plots have been disrupted. It is thanks to the hard work and dedication of our security and intelligence services, the police, and our allies overseas that almost all those plots have been thwarted, and countless lives have been saved. I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in paying tribute to those men and women, whose work so often goes unreported and unrecognised as they strive to keep us safe.
Today, however, the threat from terrorism is becoming ever-more complex and diverse. Last year we saw the first terrorist-related deaths in Great Britain since 2005: Fusilier Lee Rigby was brutally murdered by Islamist extremists, and Mohammed Saleem, an 82-year-old Muslim from Birmingham, was stabbed to death by a far-right extremist who then tried to bomb mosques in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Tipton.
ISIL and its western fighters represent a clear danger. This summer, partly in response to that threat, the independent joint terrorism analysis centre raised the threat level for international terrorism from “substantial” to “severe”. That means that JTAC considers a terrorist attack to be “highly likely”. We face the very serious prospect that British nationals who have fought with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq will seek to radicalise others, or carry out attacks here. We have already seen the appalling murder of four civilians outside the Jewish Museum in Brussels, and the recent attack on the Canadian Parliament was a shocking reminder that we are all targets for these terrorist organisations and those whom they inspire.
However, ISIL is not the only threat that we face. There are further threats related to Islamist extremism, and there are threats from far-right and Northern Ireland-related terrorism, among others. Just last week, a report from the Intelligence and Security Committee on the intelligence relating to the murder of Lee Rigby highlighted the real, and potentially very dangerous, capability gaps that exist for the security and intelligence agencies—and when our security and intelligence agencies tell us that the threat that we face is now more dangerous than at any time before or since 9/11, we must act.
We are engaged in a struggle against terrorism which is being fought on many fronts and in many forms, so our response must be comprehensive, coherent and effective. Since April 2010, in Great Britain, more than 800 people have been arrested for terrorism-related offences, more than 210 have been charged, and more than 140 have been successfully prosecuted. Only last week, Mohammed and Hamza Nawaz became the first Britons to be jailed for terrorist training in Syria, and we have outlawed groups linked to terrorist attacks in Syria, Iraq and Egypt.
We have protected the budgets for counter-terrorism policing and for the security and intelligence agencies, and, as the Prime Minister announced last week, we
have made an additional £130 million available over the next two years to help us tackle the increasing terrorist threat. We have replaced control orders, which had been whittled down by the courts, with terrorism prevention and investigation measures, or TPIMs. We have strengthened the criteria governing the use of the royal prerogative, which allows the Government to cancel British passports to disrupt the travel of people planning to engage in terrorist-related activity overseas. I have used that enhanced power 29 times since April 2013.